06 May 2018 1:59 AM

PETER HITCHENS: ID cards are great... if you want to spit on liberty and be a serf

This is Peter Hitchens's Mail on Sunday column

Here they come again, waving identity cards. The people who wrecked Britain in the first place now want to make it even worse.

Having flung our borders wide to anyone who cared to wander in, they want to use this as an excuse to introduce identity cards.

Former Labour Home Secretary Alan Johnson, and the incessant Blairite cheerleader and Times columnist David Aaronovitch, are noisily trying to dig up this grisly political corpse.

But Mr Aaronovitch spoiled things a bit by admitting that such a move would have to come ‘in tandem with an amnesty’.

He is right. Even on its own terms, the scheme is far too late to solve the migration crisis.

Millions of new people are already here, many hundreds of thousands quite illegally, and no conceivable British government would ever try to remove them all.

It can cope with a few symbolic expulsions, to make itself look tough. But can you imagine what would happen if it attempted a mass round-up of everyone who has ever climbed out of the back of a lorry and vanished into the dusk?

I can. It would explode in their faces.

The unintended consequence of mass registration will, in reality, be – as Mr Aaronovitch rightly says – an official amnesty for illegal migrants.

In which case it will be difficult to object to a future amnesty for the next lot of illegals who arrive, once there are so many of them here that it becomes an issue.

So, if identity cards don’t actually solve that problem, what do we have left? A threat to your liberty and mine.

These Blairites come from a broadly Marxist tradition (which I suspect Mr Aaronovitch understands better than Mr Johnson), so they have nothing much against centralised state power over the individual.

Mr Johnson is a nicer man who can be forgiven much because of his beautiful and moving memoir of his childhood, This Boy. But he shouldn’t be let off when he gets things wrong.

The other evening, at a celebration of the genius of the great writer and Englishman George Orwell, Mr Johnson told me (in his usual charming way) that he thought he might have persuaded Orwell to endorse our regime of CCTV cameras, surveillance of emails and increased police powers.

I do not think so. In his greatest work, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Orwell warned quite specifically against a nightmare world of hidden cameras and microphones, and arbitrary rule, much of it excused by a supposed external threat from an ever-changing enemy. I reread it often in case I forget this warning.

I am confident he would have recognised in present-day Britain the hardening outlines of an oppressive surveillance state in which the individual is powerless.

One of the keys to its operation will be identity cards.

That is their real point. They were quite useless for any of their claimed purposes when we last had them between 1939 and 1952.

I can find no instance of any spy or fifth-columnist having been caught through their use in that period.

But hundreds of busybodies and petty tyrants used them to make life difficult for innocent individuals going about their lawful business.

One of my favourite stories about this era concerns one British Jew, Myer Rubinstein, who decided not to register.

I assume he did so because he very wisely thought that, if a Nazi invasion ever came, registration would mean certain death for him, as the identity registers of so many other European countries had meant death for so many other Jews.

He went undetected without such a card, throughout the Second World War and for many years afterwards.

As for the supposed use of such cards in ‘establishing your identity’, this spectacularly did not prove to be the case for Charles Jarman, leader of the Seamen’s Union who, in 1945, was ludicrously arrested on suspicion of having led a smash-and-grab raid.

Police held him for hours despite his identity card showing ‘who he was’.

This sort of thing led, thanks to the fury and persistence of a single High Court judge, to the abolition of these useless, oppressive, breathing licences.

Actually, such cards prove nothing, except that the State has issued them. Very few criminal cases or frauds are about the identity of the culprit.

Terrorists, we may be sure, will have the very best and most convincing identity cards of all.

But if we submit to them, we will all have lost something vital. For centuries, in the English-speaking countries, the State and its officers have had to identify themselves to us, rather than the other way round.

This is the right relationship between citizen and government. It is like the presumption of innocence and jury trial, a practical and vital proof that we are free men and women.

To accept identity cards would be to turn our whole free constitution upside down, and place the State above our heads rather than under our feet, where it belongs.

If we do this, we will take a huge step back towards being serfs.

And we will be spitting on the inheritance of liberty our parents handed on to us, and betraying our children and grandchildren.

Comments

Re your article on our railways. Whilst I agree with all that you say regarding the inefficiencies and excessive charges of our privatised companies, I fear you are mistaken in your claim to have travelled south over the Forth Rail Bridge on "The Elizabethan". That train ran between Edinburgh Waverley and Kings Cross from 1953-64 and never went near the Forth. False memories, Mr Hitchens?
**PH writes: Plainly, though Waverley station is about ten minutes from the Firth of Forth, which is quite near I have the name of the train wrong. ***

The Police are nothing more than Public Disorder Bullies. Eg...Anti Frackers-Mostly Middle Aged & Wise Pensioners, Carried away Fighting for Whats Right. The Police now are Mostly Crazies ! All Planned & will Only get Worse Unless People Wake Up. The New World Order Agenda is The Goal of The Looney Elite. Look into The Root Causes Everyone. davidicke.com & Helpfreetheearth.com...And Many Other Truth Seekers. Times Running Out.

Alan, I'd forgotten all that bickering between Brown and Blair as to who should be leader! Blair of course got the best of it. By the time Brown took over, everyone was beyond sick of the Labour Party so Brown was left with pretty slim pickings. It's a good example of style over substance. Blair had the style but Brown had a far greater intellect, but was crippled by his 'old Labour' style.

To be honest, I'm rather pleased that you have come down to my level. I feel simple and basic English often conveys thoughts with more clarity - I've been reading the more recent threads and, in all honesty, I end up shaking my head, wondering how some contributors expect to convert other readers to their views. I never have that problem when I'm reading our host's posts, but, then, as an experienced journalist he writes for readers of all levels

I think Iraq was Blair's undoing, together with the bickering with Brown as to whose turn it was to next lead the party. Plus I think voters tire of the same old faces after three consecutive terms and Cameron - as a near Blair look-alike - was not likely to frighten the horses.

Alan Thomas,.."Well, I see my comments are less tedious than you like to make out; does this mean there is some form of addiction afoot here? "
I suppose there is - when debates are trolled and debaters mocked, I become addicted to confronting them down at their own level.

Just to add a further point about Blair and Major - the latter was reported in the Levenson Report as saying that he viewed Blair as being 'more right wing than he was and was not surprised when the Sun supported Blair in the election that brought Labour to power '.

Hence, perhaps, why some life-long Labour supporters never liked Blair, and some life-long Tories never liked Major. The old saying about 'not being able to please all of the people all of the time' is clearly true!"
Posted by: Alan Thomas | 07 May 2018 at 08:30 AM

I agree! In as much as Blair's 'New Labour' (commonly referred to as 'New Liebour') was very different to the party we and they, (the hardline members of the Labour Party) were used to. I can only think that he got them all to go along with the 'volte face' because they were unlikely to return to power for a very long time, if they continued as they were. People then, just didn't want a return to the sort of union led, dour, smokey old labour cliches that had gone before, of the Wilson ilk! But equally, there was a feeling of concern at the prospect of the conservatives, fat on the success of three terms in government, coming back for more. Really, it was genius of the movers and shakers behind the great Blair deception to come about at that time and in that guise just when the country was so ready for something new. But what a price we have paid in not seeing the lie, the big fat lie, that Blair actually was. I honestly can't watch him or hear him these days without thinking of those political puppets show that were so irreverently clever back then. He has become a caricature of himself.

Alan Thomas.."Perhaps you simply prefer to read contributions from the like-minded, which can, of course, be equally tedious."
How can anyone, other than a 'Billy-no-mates', not prefer the 'like-minded' or find them tedious when their opinions are so rightly alike?

Well, you are fully in control of the level of tedium that you find in my posts as they are not compulsory reading; as to provocation, I suppose that is part of my intention. Perhaps you simply prefer to read contributions from the like-minded, which can, of course, be equally tedious.

Alan Thomas.."The fact that you are not happy is really of no concern to me whatsoever."
Of course it isn't and what a pity, I was really hoping you might discern the irony and begin to understand how your own style of debating appears. Tediously provocative!

Well, it does not appear that I need to 'explain myself' to the person concerned. He advised that his remark was a joke, I was happy with his reply. The fact that you are not happy is really of no concern to me whatsoever.

"Well, as the comment I was responding to was speaking of France, I would have thought that was obvious, as is in much the same way that being 'better' is normally understood."
Alan Thomas, did you not say ...." .....have you not considered that 'feeling superior' to other countries...." ?
And what are your parameters for being 'better'? 'Better' in the context of your observation is surely a comparison. You can't just say , "I had a bread roll today and it was better" - therefore you must know that such a statement is nonsense - even if you happened to imagine it was ill before you ate it.
Explain yourself, sir!

Well, as the comment I was responding to was speaking of France, I would have thought that was obvious, as is in much the same way that being 'better' is normally understood.

Vikki b

I see I'm not the only 'joker' here, but I was being serious in my description of John Major's view that Blair was more to the Right than he was. If you wish I'll repeat the gist of my recent post here so that we can continue the debate.

Taking the author's word, I went to see 'The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society' and it certainly was quite good ; the acting and directing are noticeably superior for modern film standards and the story has substance without being too fanciful.

Better than which "other countries" and better for what?
Better than Myanmar's, the Yemen's, or the USA's and China's - two extremes of wealth and poverty - for instance?
Better by what measure(s) does your 'better' mean - cheapness, efficiency, taste, safety, accessibility, honesty, integrity..etc? After all they all help in making things better - as does attitude.
Your attitude seems to insinuate that we are somewhat worse than 'other countries' and you are lacking in your own exacting, banana skin requirements of clarity, Mr Thomas.

Michael Wood writes, "Alan Thomas and Martin,
What a pair of unpleasant scoffers you turned out to be!
Mr Morrison speaks more sense in any one of his posts than both of you together have in hundreds!"

Just want to add my agreement. One thinks he knows everything and the other one just makes jokes.

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